Are F/T Faculty Losing Their Bargaining Power?
by TAA Staff
SOME PROFESSORS SEE nothing to fear in the growing number
of adjuncts on campus. The strike at Long Island University’s
C. W. Post campus may give them pause. This past spring, full-time
faculty tried to shut down the campus to protest what they
regarded as inadequate pay and an excessive workload. But
they managed to cancel only a third of classes, as adjuncts,
who are not part of the full-time faculty union, but rather
of the Communication Workers of America, did not join the
strike en masse. A few adjuncts may not have crossed the picket
line, but most continued to teach their classes, according
to Bonnie Borenstein, the university’s assistant vice president
for academic affairs.
Without support from adjuncts, full-time faculty are losing
their bargaining power, admits Ralph Knopf, president of the
faculty union and math professor at C. W. Post. He laments
the current state of affairs in which adjuncts and full-time
temporary instructors comprise an increasing proportion of
faculty.
“The whole thing has eroded,” he says. “We have permanent
adjuncts and temporary full-timers.”
Knopf, who has taught 40 years at Long Island University,
remembers the days when full-time faculty were integral to
the mission of every university. Today they no longer have
a role in governance, he believes.
“The system is top heavy,” says Knopf. “All decisions are
made at the top.”
Adjuncts, by their sheer numbers, have the capacity to weaken
a strike by withholding their support from full-time faculty,
believes Rachel Hendrickson, coordinator of higher education
for the National Education Association.
“The concept of a strike is to shut down a university,” she
says. “If an institution runs, the strike doesn’t make its
point.”
The key to any strike is solidarity. Hendrickson cites the
example of a recent strike of public universities and community
colleges in Hawaii. More than 90 percent of full- and part-time
faculty honored the picket line, crippling the educational
system.
Bargaining units are strongest when they incorporate both
full- and part-time faculty, says Richard Moser, national
field representative for the American Association of University
Professors. Adjuncts have enormous latent power, he believes.
A frustration of union organizers is that too often faculty,
adjuncts included, do not realize their capacity to change
the way universities do business. A historian by training,
Moser takes heart from the civil rights movement, believing
that if Mississippi sharecroppers could alter the social and
economic landscape of the South, then full- and part-time
faculty can restructure the academy. But for this to happen,
full-time instructors must understand that they and adjuncts
share the same interests.
Too often full-time faculty have been content to shift the
burden of teaching survey courses to adjuncts and to allow
one-year replacements to cover their courses during sabbatical.
But full-timers are paying a price for their complicity in
the academic labor system, insists Moser. When their income
is adjusted for inflation, full-time faculty today earn only
95 cents of the dollar they earned in 1971.
“The real point is that there are too many adjuncts,” says
Knopf.
As a result, full-time faculty have lost their leverage,
he believes. Twenty years ago professors at C. W. Post tried
to strengthen their position by organizing adjuncts as part
of their union, as full- and part-time faculty have done at
the Brooklyn campus, but the National Labor Relations Board
ruled that full- and part-timers at Post must form separate
unions. Since then, the position of full-time faculty has
deteriorated.
“It’s pitched war over here,” says Knopf. “Just because the
strike ended doesn’t mean the war is over.”
